UPDATE 4-17-06: This content is Outdated as of Patch 1.9
The King of Stormwind is no longer in Alcaz Island. He has been moved, and now a Gnome lvl 62 is above at the house. The Gnome is related to the Opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. Therefore, the info below is incorrect. This newspost created in 3-2005 is now a year older than the update.

Many fans are wondering what happened to the King of Stormwind. Others ask why a child is now King. The Missing Diplomat quest starting in Sentinel Hill (Westfall) along the storyline of the Defias Brotherhood, reveals that the Diplomat is really the King of Stormwind. The Defias Brotherhood’s leader Vancleef had a grudge with the King. After Warcraft 2 events with the invasion of the Orcs through the Dark Portal, the repairs to the Stormwind city were not properly paid to the Masons who helped rebuild the city. Vancleef created the Defias Brotherhood in an attempt to steal from the rich. In vengeance, the King was kidnapped while traveling to Theramore—to visit Jaina Proudmoore. Due to the disappearance of the King and to not cause chaos in the deteriorating politics of Stormwind, the King’s child son was proclaimed King. Mysteriously, Lady Prestor became Advisor for the Child King. In Warcraft: Day of the Dragons novel, written by Richard A. Knaak, Deathwing(one of the five dragon aspects) posed as a human named Prestor. He got into the politics of Alterac City and he was engaged to marry Arthas’s sister, in an attempt to dominate the Lordaeron Kingdom. Rarely enough, a Lady Prestor advises the child King. It was revealed that Lady Prestor is really Onyxia in disguise.

The King of Stormwind—Varian Wrynn, is found in a catacomb sewer system located in Alcaz Island, in Dustwallow Marsh. The Alcaz island is heavily protected by Hydras level 61 Elite and Naga level 60 Elite. Surely, there most exist some connection between Onyxia and the Naga. Onyxia might possibly have deceived the Defias Brotherhood on her Human disguise and facilitated the kidnapping of the King. Easily explained. But … what is the connection between Onyxia and the Naga? Why does the Naga have the King captive if it was the Defias who kidnapped him?

Here are the screenshots of the King of Stormwind and the entrance to the Sewer System where he is held prisoner. Read more …

UPDATE 4-17-06: This content is Outdated as of Patch 1.9
The King of Stormwind is no longer in Alcaz Island. He has been moved, and now a Gnome lvl 62 is above at the house. The Gnome is related to the Opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. Therefore, the info below is incorrect. This newspost created in 3-2005 is now a year older than the update.

Many fans are wondering what happened to the King of Stormwind. Others ask why a child is now King. The Missing Diplomat quest starting in Sentinel Hill (Westfall) along the storyline of the Defias Brotherhood, reveals that the Diplomat is really the King of Stormwind. The Defias Brotherhood leader Vancleef had a grudge with the King. After Warcraft 2 events with the invasion of the Orcs through the Dark Portal, the repairs to the Stormwind city were not properly paid to the Masons who helped rebuild the city. Vancleef created the Defias Brotherhood in an attempt to steal from the rich. In vengeance, the King was kidnapped while traveling to Theramore to visit Jaina Proudmoore. Due to the disapperance of the King and to not cause chaos in the deteriorating politics of Stormwind, the King’s child son was proclaimed King. Mysteriously, Lady Prestor became councelor for the Child King. In Warcraft: Day of the Dragons novel, written by Richard A. Knaak, Deathwing(one of the five dragon aspects) posed as a human named Prestor. He got into the politics of Alterac City and he was engaged to marry Arthas’s sister, in an attempt to dominate the Lordaeron Kingdom. Rarely enough, a Lady Prestor councels the child King. It was revealed that Lady Prestor is really Onyxia in disguise. What is intersting is if there is any connection between Onyxia, the Defias Brotherhood and the Naga.

The King of Stormwind—Varian Wrynn, is found in a catacomb sewer system located in Alcaz Island, in Dustwallow Marsh. The Alcaz island is heavily proteced by Hydras level 61 Elite and Naga level 60 Elite. Surely, there most exist some connection between Onyxia and the Naga. Onyxia might possibly have deceived the Defias Brotherhood on her Human disguise, easily explained. But … what is the connecion between Onyxia and the Naga? Strangely, the Naga look reptilian. It would be interesting to keep learning more Chris Metzen’s Warcraft Lore. In War of the Anciens: Well of Eternity novel—by Richard A. Knaak—it is mentioned that the Councelor of Queen Azshara was named Xavius. In Warcraft 3’s Lore from the Player Manual-books, Deathwing was once named Xaxius by Ancient Elves. Is there a coincidence or was Deathwing posing as an Elf councelor to gain control of Queen Azshara and the High Elves? More importantly, Was Deathwing’s intention to bring the Burning Legion into the world 10,000 years ago to cleanse and destroy everything?

Here are the screenshots of the King of Stormwind and the entrance to the Sewer System where he is held prisoner. When you find the prison gate, turn to your right. There is a deep water dive and a hidden underwater tunnel that leads into the King’s Prison.

Blizzard announced the release of 3 new Action figures featuring the Horde. Hopefully, we will get some Alliance love with a line of action figures. The previous series have been mostly focused on Warcraft heroes. This time the new series seem to focus on a merge of race/classes. Click the images below for a bigger image:

With its voodoo-based powers, the Troll Priest is adept at entering the minds of enemies and mending the wounds of allies.

The Tauren Shaman seeks to preserve balance among the Four Elements and calls on the awesome powers of nature to defeat foes.

A deadly magic-user, the Undead Warlock taps into destructive energies and summons fearsome demonic minions for the cause of the Forsaken.

Ordinn replied a thread concerning the Meeting Stones new feature to be included in the next content patch:

I have one quest left in RFD, and it’s a huge pain to get anyone to go there. So… do I go to the stone and add my name? Then go off and quest on the other side of the world where my other quests are? Do I wait? Are people ported to me?

No one is “ported.” You click on the meeting stone and it will automatically try to place you in a group. If there are no groups immediately available you can go quest to your hearts content. As soon as a group is available it will add you, and at that point you will have to travel back to the instance.

Does the meeting stone scan the “LFG” channel for the keywords or quests pertaining to that instance? Does the stone respond to people saying “LFG RFD” in Ogrimmar? If I’m next to RFD do I get an update in chat?

No. Players have to click on the meeting stone in order to be placed in a group. As for an update – you will automatically get placed in a group if one becomes available

Angelo, a level 60 Paladin on the PvP Test server, reported that Azuregos—a dragon raid event—has been killed. He provided some screenshots showing the death of the colossal blue dragon and a screenshot of the Rare purple item it dropped. Casters should take a look to this awesome dagger that offers 10+ Intellect, 51.7 damage per sec, speed 1.50, Equip: Improves chance of 1% of critical strike with Spells and Equip: Restores 4 mana every 5 sec. Good job!

Flagship Studios let us know that Bill Roper CEO of the company was interviewed by Computer Games Magazine. Bill Roper announces that they are closer to soon unveil more info about the game they have been working on for almost two years. Hanbitsoft and Namco are the Publishing Partners of the new game that is been developed by a staff of 22 employees. Some of them ex-Blizzard North employees. I think we can wait forward for a E3 expo announcement—hopefully. Additionally, Bob Moseley, Webmaster of Flagship Studios informed us that Tricia Gray(Trish) has been introduced as new Public Relations Director and she is assigned to deal with fan sites. Read the press release sent to us …

Athalus, host of WCRadio, interviewed Caydiem—World of Warcraft Community Manager—on Saturday March 12 at 7:00 PM in a 2-hours show to discuss about Battlegrounds, among other topics. Visit WCRadio Here. If you have iTunes or Winamp make sure to click this link to listen to the recorded interview ready for download:http://www.wcradio.com/caydiem.html

Blizzard Entertainment has nnounced that World of Warcraft will launch in Taiwan in cooperation with Taiwanese partner, Soft-World International Corporation. For full details on this announcement, please read official press release here.

Blizzard Europe UK Released a preview of the PvP Honor and Rewards system. There is a total of 14 ranks in the PvP Honor system. One of them is Stone Guard. If you are a Horde player, this rank will be familiar to you. That building near the Valley of Spirits with the instance-whirlpool in Orgrimmar says that you can’t enter unless you are a Stone Guard or higher rank. The Alliance version is in the Old Town by the Barracks. Previews to the Shaman and Horde Warrior sets were displayed. Reward items can be purchased from PvP vendors located inside the Barracks. Read more details.

Blizzard Entertainment is at wide lengths seeking for job applicants to fill the positions for the European Support Team. Such is their goal to get more employees that Blizzard paid Gamesindustry.biz to place an ad banner at the top-right of their website. You may have to refresh the page few times until the ad banner loads in their website. Just in case below we show you the ad banner. Visit the Job Opportunities page at the UK Website. The positions sought are:.

Blizzard has plans to open two Public Test servers that will allow players to test the patches before they go live. This is a feature many MMO veterans wished from Blizzard, since some of MMOs out there offer this feature. The bad news is that some lvl 56-60 players will be chosen at random to allow them access to this Public Test servers. Make sure to check your email often and make sure to check your Junk mail in case your provider has filters. Read the full announcement Here. To read the long patch notes for the new Public test servers go Here

Blizzard: Two new public test realms will be going live soon! These realms will give select players the chance to experience new content before it is patched to public realms. More importantly, it gives us a place to test new features and systems in a live environment without impacting the public realms. This will allow us to provide players with more frequent content patches in the future.

Moving forward, all players who have an active World of Warcraft account will be eligible to participate in testing on the test realms. However, this initial testing phase requires characters between the levels of 55 and 60 in order to properly test the content and functionality for the next patch. Email invitations have been sent out to a random set of players who meet these qualifications. Their level 55 to 60 characters have been copied to the test realm and will be waiting for them when they log in for the first time.

Blizzard released few minutes ago the preview to Dire Maul. An ancient vault of arcane secrets once built by the High Elves under the orders of Queen Azshara. For thousands of years, after the destruction of the Well of Eternity, Dire Maul has been a place where few adventurers have gone out alive, and none have unveiled the secret arcane items hidden in the depths of the vaults. The complex has 3 sections varing from lvl 56 to lvl 60 content.

Features:

Dire Maul consists of three separate wings ranging in difficulty from level 56 to 60.

There are many ways to complete the quests located in Dire Maul, and the decisions a party makes along the way will directly influence the potential rewards.

In recent years, rumors have surfaced of an ancient arena within Dire Maul’s courtyard where unique creatures were once fought for sport.

Adventurers will find that the occupants of Dire Maul possess many rare and epic weapons, armors, and profession recipes never before seen on Azeroth.

Blizzard released few minutes ago the preview to Dire Maul. An ancient vault of arcane secrets once built by the High Elves under the orders of Queen Azshara. For thousands of years, after the destruction of the Well of Eternity, Dire Maul has been a place where few adventurers have gone out alive, and none have unveiled the secret arcane items hidden in the depths of the vaults. The complex has 3 sections varing from lvl 56 to lvl 60 content.

Features:

Dire Maul consists of three separate wings ranging in difficulty from level 56 to 60.

There are many ways to complete the quests located in Dire Maul, and the decisions a party makes along the way will directly influence the potential rewards.

In recent years, rumors have surfaced of an ancient arena within Dire Maul’s courtyard where unique creatures were once fought for sport.

Adventurers will find that the occupants of Dire Maul possess many rare and epic weapons, armors, and profession recipes never before seen on Azeroth.

NY Times wrote a 3-pages article highlighting the great success of World of Warcraft, anecdotes while playing different areas of the game, anecdotes of Paul Sams when he saw the 5,000 football-looking wait-line at Fry’s Game store, and a view into Chris Metzen’s meeting discussions with the developers taking decisions on the 3D looks that the Tower of Medivh should have to match the storyline offered in the Warcraft: The Last Guardian novel. NY Times articles get archived after a while, so read it very fast while it lasts. For now it is free. You can read the article Here

According to Gamespot, a chinese source has confirmed that over 100,000 accounts have been created in advance to the expected release of World of Warcraft Beta in China to take place in two weeks.

GamespotAfter breaking records in North America and Europe, World of Warcraft is storming China, and it isn’t even available yet. According to the Chinese game-industry newsletter Pacific Epoch, in the first hour that registration was open, 100,000 gamers signed up for accounts hoping to participate in the game’s closed beta test. Beta testing is slated to begin in about two weeks, according to the game’s local operator in China, the9.com

Blizzard released the new Frozen Throne patch with bonus maps and fixes to many races’s abilities. The most exciting changes are of interest to Warcraft III/Frozen Throne Modding makers as the World Edit Tool has been revamped with new features. Read more …

Jason Hayes answered few questions about his current whereabouts. He is launching his own music company and is planning to release a music album CD soon. His company website will be updated in a few weeks to offer fans an interactive site where his music fans may communicate and download music. Make sure to join his forums. Jason Hayes told us of his interest to support the Modding Community and Voice actors guilds. Here is the interview, enjoy!

Gamesindustry.biz interviewed Paul Sams and Chris Metzen few weeks ago. The second part of the interview reveals many things about the transition from Nihilistic to Swinging Ape studios, and the new direction the game is taking. Somewhere during the interview, there was an answer that may fill players with uncertainty. Would it be possible that Starcraft: Ghost aims to provide multiplayer components? Read an excerpt:

“StarCraft and WarCraft III are particularly popular in “professional” gaming tournaments; how important does Blizzard consider that area to be? Is just a quirky oddity, or is it something you see growing in importance, and in public profile, in the future?

Paul: We see it growing. Not only do we see it growing, but we just hired a person to be in charge of tournaments in our company. We want to do more support of tournaments, and we want to build more tournament capabilities into our products, and to have tournaments and competitive play more in our thought process as we’re creating our games.

We want to continue to create great singleplayer product, but that has incredible, compelling multiplayer play that has competitive components. We think that that is another element of the future that we really want to focus on , and we think that we’ve done a pretty decent job at it so far.”

Glynnis, our favorite voice actress of Kerrigan in Starcraft, will be signing books, and any Starcraft or Diablo items on March 12 and 13 at Los Angeles County Irish Fair and Music Festival at the Fairplex in Pomona, California. Click the link above for the official website of the event with the detailed address. You can meet her at the Tea & Sympathy booth. If you visit her, make sure to take photos and to submit them to us. You may contact me at my profile. Starcraft Kerrigan actress, Glynnis, was interviewed by Blizzplanet some time ago. You may read our interview Here.

Read Glynnis’s Press Release about her upcoming Book Signing event. Besides a Gaming Voice actress, Glynnis is also a Medieval Romance writer of many books that have been awarded. She was also the voice behind MTV The Maxx and some Diablo II characters.

A small group known the r3v0luti0nz team has begun to create starcraft theme fan movies, however without proper models they cannot release their work, so anyone interested in created 3dmax models and/or updating low poly ones please contact [email protected] for information. Currently they have no website to link to, so all questions/comments should be sent to [email protected]

With the new patch a flurry of new features has been added, amoung the most interesting ones are the multiplayer/singleplayer remembering last folder (for game creators) viewing the minimap for the game you are about to join, minimap ping and so forth.

Blade66777, Modding member of Star Alliance, is making a call to all Voice actors to contact him for a new Starcraft Mod project that will have a Map Campaign. If you have a microphone and talent and wish to make a debut, you may also contact him. Star Alliance has a Voice acting guild named SAVAGE. Read the requirements and the description of the characters you will voice at the following forum. You may leave a message in the forums or contact Blade66777 with your application.

Please be aware that this is not the same system we’ve been using previously, this system is more stable.

Also, I’ve updated the news system, it now displays only 10 articles per page, and you can use the page navigation to quickly go from one page to another. The page navigation only appears when the message block is hiden or you are viewing the News from the news module.

The Content system is back online, I’ve also updated the Message site programmer feature, once again I would like to remind people that I do read the messages given to me on the message site programmer feature. Should at anytime the system fail you can email me at [email protected]. You can also catch me on AIM (Nemesis2Darkness) or MSN ([email protected]om).

Thank you all who are patient for these updates, I hope you continue to visit us.

Edit: Sorry for the erreta on the post, it’s fixed now and the email should work.

Still a work in progress and they won’t release betas. However they update and show pics and such. It converts WC3 units, data, maps into Starcraft. The mod seems to be promissing, lets just hope this doen’t end up like Infroceptor’s StarCraft to WarCraft conversion.

Athalus from WCRadio.com invites you to listen to the community radio show this saturday at 7pm est. Richard A. Knaak was interviewed on the phone by Athalus, and you may listen to the interview today Saturday. The interview is about his latest Blizzard book War of the Ancients: Demon Soul, available at bookstores. Visit the site here and launch your Winamp or iTunes to listen to the interview.

Blizzard released a new patch which removes reagents for Mark of the Wild, Fortitude and Arcane Intellect. Using spirit healer now deals 25% loss of your armor instead of 100%. You may read the patch notes Here. Blizzard also announced that all Closed and Open Beta characters will be regretably wiped. Everyone will start with a clean tab, creating a fresh new character. Open Beta ends today Wednesday, November 18th. Congratulations to all beta testers that helped Blizzard developers iron out and polish the game. We had a lot of fun, and thank Blizzard for their long dedication to develop this awesome game. See ya in Retail on November 23 in the World of Warcraft.